Cass Sunstein reviews "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism."

That's a book by Sarah Conly, published by Cambridge University Press. 206 pages, $95. $95! Fortunately, we cannot be coerced to buy that. I will exercise my autonomy and refrain from buying it. I'll just read Sunstein, for free, here.

[A] significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty....

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

Sunstein refers to social science research that shows people actually aren't very good at making decisions for themselves. We have "present bias" (and don't pay enough attention to the future), we're bad at assessing probability, and we're "unrealistically optimistic."

Until now, we have lacked a serious philosophical discussion of whether and how recent behavioral findings undermine Mill’s harm principle and thus open the way toward paternalism. Sarah Conly’s illuminating book Against Autonomy provides such a discussion....

To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them....

If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so....

A natural objection is that autonomy is an end in itself and not merely a means. On this view, people should be entitled to choose as they like, even if they end up choosing poorly. In a free society, people must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and to the extent possible learn from them, rather than facing correction and punishment from bureaucratic meddlers. Conly responds that when government makes (some) decisions for us, we gain not only in personal welfare but also in autonomy, if only because our time is freed up to deal with what most concerns us....

 As for Sunstein himself, he prefers a softer form of government manipulation, described in the article and in his book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."

"One person with belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."

The paraphrased John Stuart Mill quote that the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik tweeted before his murderous rampage.

In 2009 he wrote about the need to set up a counter to what he described as "the violent Norwegian Marxist organisations" that he believed terrorised the "politically conservative"....

Things Breivik blogged:

The vast majority of new faces in the Progress party are now politically correct career politicians and not in any way idealists who are willing to take risks and work for idealistic goals....

In Norway and Sweden extreme Marxist attitudes have become acceptable/everyday while the old-established truths of patriotism and cultural conservatism today are branded as extremism....

I have on some occasions discussed with… the [English Defence League] and recommended them to use conscious strategies. The tactics of the EDL is to 'entice' an overreaction from jihad youth/extreme Marxists, something they have succeeded [in] several times already.

So, here is one man, apparently acting alone but believing perhaps that his action is the equivalent of 100,000. What he did was emphatically not an "idea" — as Mill had it. I'm speculating that he imagined his action embodied an idea: That others like him could act on their own to great effect, for his cause. Why amass armies or even terrorist groups, when individuals, understanding the idea, can take up their arms and set out on the day they feel called and take down 100 (or more) selected individuals who represent these "new faces in the Progress party"  (or whomever the enemy is supposed to be)?

This is a powerful idea. Will we not hear it again and again, as Breivik receives endless publicity and his politics and motivations are plumbed and analyzed? It is a viral idea, and the media are catching the virus right now. As we talk about Breivik, we need to think clearly about what we are doing and whether we are promoting his cause.

By the way, the John Stuart Mill quote, unparaphrased, is: "One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests." It's from "Representative Government," which you can read in its entirety here. Here's the quote in context:

To think that because those who wield the power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests. They who can succeed in creating a general persuasion that a certain form of government, or social fact of any kind, deserves to be preferred, have made nearly the most important step which can possibly be taken towards ranging the powers of society on its side. On the day when the proto-martyr was stoned to death at Jerusalem, while he who was to be the Apostle of the Gentiles stood by "consenting unto his death," would any one have supposed that the party of that stoned man were then and there the strongest power in society?

The Biblical reference is to the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and the Apostle of the Gentiles is Paul, then Saul, consenting to the stoning.

"If John Stuart Mill were around today, he would likely ask, 'When did Bob Wright and the left turn against free speech?'"

Wrote Meade in the thread about the dispute between me and Bob Wright, in which Bob Wright wanted to limit the concept of "free speech" to rights the individual holds against the government. Meade quoted John Stuart Mill, who wrote:

"Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

Penetrating much more deeply... enslaving the soul itself!

Wright also argued against the evolution of the meaning of words, but what if strict usage had checked the evolution of the meaning of the word "liberal"? Wright would need to resist calling himself a liberal.